


wishing into existence

by EastOfEll



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 05:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10455930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EastOfEll/pseuds/EastOfEll
Summary: emma dreams of alternate universes, and in every one, she and regina get together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> just a drabble out of boredom tbqh. never thought a SQ hug would bum me out, but here we are, haha.
> 
> enjoy :)

emma had heard something on the radio right before storybrooke had come crashing into her life― that dreams could be cracked doors to alternate universes.

 

and, sure, emma had heard of alternate universes before, but what a bunch of  _ bullshit _ , right?

 

flash forward a few weeks later and the son she put up for adoption a decade ago was trying to tell emma her parents were an iconic fairy tale couple. so, in the grand scheme of things, not the wildest thing to happen in emma’s life.

 

the dreams start shortly after the curse breaks. they slowly follow through emma’s adventures― the enchanted forest, neverland, zelena, the enchanted forest again, frozen (2015), the three villains emma truly thought had no connection to each other, the enchanted forest, a third time, being the fucking  _ dark one _ ― 

 

the dreams have two things in common.

 

1.) henry is always in them.  _ always _ . sometimes she’s not his biological mother. sometimes he is, and she raises him. sometimes she still finds storybrooke, and is still the savior. sometimes, magic is out of the question entirely.

 

2.) she always finds regina. most of the time, through henry. sometimes, through bumping in the street, regina’s a regular customer at the bakery emma works at, they’re students in the same statistics class―

 

no matter what happens, regina always comes into emma’s life, and they become  _ more _ .

 

the first time she dreams of this she doesn’t realize until several years later it’s the first one; a woman, propped up on the counter, emma can feel her hands wrapped around the woman’s thighs, before a door slams and a deep, teenage voice announces, “moms, i’m home!”

 

short, short snippets of lives she’s only able to live for a few hours at a time. sometimes those hours feel like an eternity, years and years going by, and, like her first dream, sometimes they’re only a millisecond of what could be. and, emma didn’t think it was  _ too  _ weird. so what, dream emma has an obsession with regina? her subconscious is going crazy, but that’s okay, because usually something crazier is going on while emma’s awake, anyway.

 

the night it becomes truly indescribable is the night in between henry breaking the curse of heroes and villains and the night emma becomes the dark one.

 

because she  _ knows _ heroes and villains. she’s dreamt it several times― she was never stuck in a castle, that she knows of, but she remembers regina, the bandit on the run, henry getting the two to meet, bonding over bonfires and living in the forest―

 

this is when emma realizes alternate realities exist. and she should’ve known. she got a C in her creative writing class; there was no way it was her own thoughts constructing what she dreamt of. because emma has held the torch plenty of times, sure, but she’s never been the one to light it in the first place.

 

(something she loves henry for. something she sometimes  _ envies  _ him for. she wonders, maybe, in all those books henry found, if her dreams are there, in print, for anyone to see.)

 

when she’s the dark one, it makes her angry. because she wants regina in this universe, too. she wants regina, and henry, and her parents, a  _ family _ , something just out of her grasp; the dreams are how her fingertips barely graze what she wants, but they’re also how it’s smoke when she tries to grab it for herself. because fate’s an asshole.

 

she lights a car on fire to tell fate she thinks so.

 

and instead of sleeping to dream something she knows she can’t have (she won’t have, not with robin, not with killian, not with the dice set up the way they’ve been put on the table), her mind gives her one more  _ fuck you  _ and turns her into an insomniac. 

 

in the underworld, she is tired. she can’t sleep. she  _ wants _ to, but she can’t. her mother thinks it’s because she’s worried about killian― maybe she is, she’s sure she is― but emma can’t help but laugh at the irony.

 

when killian proposes, she says yes. she’s not unhappy with him (she isn’t, she  _ isn’t _ , she isn’t!) but it’s the same feeling she gets when she eats a bunch of vegetables knowing it’s the chocolate cake in the fridge that she truly wants a bite of. it’s not that carrots and ranch aren’t a  _ good  _ snack, they can even be a  _ great _ snack at times, but emma never feels like it’s enough.

 

and, as much as emma hates to admit it, even to herself, regina is that chocolate cake.

 

and she could die any moment now, anyway. so, why  _ not _ .

 

that night, emma lies in bed, killian on her right, and she stares at the ceiling, baby blue paint staring right back at her.

 

out of the thousands of universes to live in, to have your conscious be stuck into, emma seems to have been in the one universe where her and regina don’t get together. and it makes sense. emma may not be a mathematician, but if there are an infinite amount of universes where something happens, there has to be at least one universe where it  _ doesn’t _ happen, right?

 

at least regina is here, emma thinks, because that means there’s at least one universe out there where emma  _ doesn’t  _ meet regina.

 

and henry, too. because whatever universe where emma doesn’t get regina  _ or  _ henry, she never want to dream of it.

 

with that, emma closes her eyes.


End file.
